This does not replace your responsibility to report income earned through FastSpring. You’re still responsible for meeting any local income reporting requirements in your country.

Under IRS regulations, FastSpring is required to report certain payment transactions to the IRS. As a result, FastSpring will issue Form 1099-K to U.S. sellers who meet the applicable IRS reporting thresholds.

Where Can I Find My Total Earnings?

To view your year-to-date gross sales:

• Go to FastSpring App Dashboard > Account Summary.
• Weekly Summary Reports, when totaled, show your Gross Sales for the calendar year.

Gross Sales are calculated as gross proceeds minus discounts, returns, and FastSpring fees. Taxes are excluded, where applicable.

For more detailed reporting, you can also use Payout Statements, which include orders, refunds, fees, chargebacks, and adjustments.

Where to Find Your Payout Statements

Payout statements are available in the FastSpring App Dashboard:

1. Go to Account Summary.
2. Select Payout History.

From there:

• Click a date range under Payout Cycle to view a specific payout.
• Select Generate Statements to create monthly or annual statements.
• Use the download icon to save or share statements.

These statements are commonly used for reconciliation and year-end tax preparation.

1099-K Reporting: What’s Current for 2025 Reporting Year

Under updated IRS guidance, Form 1099-K is generally issued to U.S. sellers only if both of the following thresholds are met:

• More than $20,000 in gross payments, and
• More than 200 transactions in a calendar year.

Receiving a 1099-K does not mean you owe additional tax. The form reports gross proceeds, not net taxable income. You are taxed on net income after refunds, fees, and allowable deductions.

For more information, please see our Tax information reporting: Form 1099-K page. 

Update Your Tax Information (W-8 / W-9)

All sellers are required to complete and maintain a valid Form W-9 (U.S. sellers) or Form W-8 (non-U.S. sellers) in the FastSpring dashboard.

Sellers must promptly review and update their tax information whenever there is a change that could affect tax reporting or withholding, including but not limited to:

• A change in legal entity name or classification.
• A change in tax residency or country of incorporation.
• A change in authorized signatory.
• A change in permanent address or business address.
• Any other change that impacts the accuracy of the information provided on the W-9 or W-8.

Failure to keep tax information current may result in incorrect tax reporting, backup withholding, or delays in payment processing.

To update your tax information:

1. Log in to the FastSpring App.
2. Go to Account Summary > Manage Tax Information.
3. Complete or update your W-8 or W-9.

If your tax details or mailing address change after a 1099-K is issued, contact
support@fastspring.com.

Quick Tips for a Smooth Year End

• Track earnings consistently using weekly summaries and payout statements.
• Understand gross vs. net income when reviewing 1099-K data.
• Keep records of refunds, fees, and expenses.
• Reach out early if you need help accessing reports or tax documents.

The post 2025 Year-End US Tax Reporting With FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.

If you look just underneath the surface, you find annual recurring revenue (ARR) telling you who showed up to make a purchase. Dig a little deeper and you’re going to find net revenue retention (NRR) which tells you who stayed long-term.

By focusing on optimizing your net revenue retention rate in addition to ARR, you can supercharge revenue, reduce customer acquisition costs, and even boost your valuation.

Below, we’ll cover:

• What NRR is and how it differs from ARR.
• Why you should optimize for both.
• How FastSpring can help with both ARR and NRR.

If you’ve been looking at payment services providers but want a more comprehensive merchant of record to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, and digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

What Is NRR?

Net recurring revenue is a measure of how well a company has retained and grown revenue from current customers. 

This is different from ARR because ARR is a measure of total recurring revenue (annualized) from current customers without accounting for the growth of current customers the way that NRR does.

A simple NRR calculation is to divide your total recurring revenue by the starting recurring revenue over a specific period.

ARR and NRR: Two Sides of the Same Engine

Most digital product and SaaS companies track annual recurring revenue, which is an annualized figure showing the predictable revenue streams from your subscribers. 

Imagine you’re on a road trip — that’s your business journey and it’s made up of two parts: ARR and NRR.

ARR tells you how many users said yes to your product. It’s like inviting people on a road trip and your users are the ones who said ‘yes’.

But you’re not only interested in filling up the seats in the car. NRR tells you if your users keep saying yes after their initial purchase. It’s like how long your passengers ride along and if they start pitching in for gas.

ARR is motion. NRR is momentum.

You can accelerate fast and close deals quickly, but NRR shows if customers are comfortable enough on the ride to pitch in for snacks, take scenic detours, or explore additional routes and services.

NRR reveals if your product continues delivering value when no one’s watching. It measures whether what you’ve built truly holds up out on the open road.

In short, ARR gets you started, but NRR keeps you going. To build lasting growth, companies need both metrics working together. One showing how effectively you’re acquiring customers, and the other how well you’re retaining and expanding on those relationships. Balancing motion and momentum means knowing not just which users said yes, but which users continue to say yes — and why.

Why Both ARR and NRR Are So Important for Growth

While ARR tells you how effectively you get people to join your road trip, NRR is the fine print telling you how your product fits within their world. It’s about upsells, churn, and the overall health of your product.

Growth isn’t just about getting new customers — it’s about proactively working to maintain, nurture, and expand accounts. It’s ensuring that the current customers coming on the trip also settle in, turn up the music, and plan to stay.

So for anyone building or growing a product, embracing both ARR and NRR together is the magic formula for long-term, sustainable growth. NRR doesn’t care about drag racing to win new customers — it cares about keeping existing customers on a steady journey for the long haul.

What Signs to Watch For, and Why ARR + NRR Matters

ARR measures your company’s ability to acquire new customers effectively, while NRR provides deeper insight into how well your products continue to deliver value over time. When you measure ARR and NRR, there are some key things to keep an eye out for:

Is NRR on the Rise?

A rising NRR signals genuine product-market fit and customers are expanding services without being pushed. This momentum is only possible when the foundation set by ARR is strong and the experience post-sale holds up.

Use this signal to double down on what’s working:

• Identify which products, features, customer segments, or behaviors correlate with growth and build around them.
• Reinforce post-sale engagement to help more customers reach value faster. Double down on education, proactive support, product training, and other customer success levers to help your entire user base be successful.
• Create a growth potential playbook based on the successful customer journey and use it to inform lifecycle marketing, upsell triggers, and even product roadmap decisions.
• Turn your high NRR into new sales by capturing and sharing testimonials, case studies, and usage benchmarks to show future users what ongoing value looks like.

Keep in mind: rapid ARR growth can mask churn. Monitor your leading indicators like support tickets, feature usage, NPS, and be ready to intervene early. Growth hides churn… until it doesn’t.

Is NRR Declining?

A declining NRR isn’t just a retention rate problem. It’s a signal that your growth engine is leaking. You might be adding ARR through new customers, but without retention and expansion, that growth won’t compound.

If you’re having growth troubles, address it early with a structured approach:

• Dive into your data to look for patterns. Break down customer churn by segment, product usage, and support history. Look for spikes in cancellations, stalled renewals, or downgrades.
• Speak with churned and at-risk customers to understand what changed and use feedback to improve. Use this feedback to validate your hypothesis from your data or as an indicator to do more research.
• Look to improve your customer retention levers like onboarding, self-serve resources, and engaging inactive users. Customer growth can be largely impacted by feeling supported throughout the entire lifecycle, not just at product delivery.
• Consider changing your product positioning or packaging. Sometimes you’ve got the right product, but user expectations aren’t being met. If you’re seeing feedback that users aren’t getting the value they expected, it might be a sign that you need to change up messaging in sales, pricing, and onboarding.

In today’s SaaS business landscape, where customer acquisition costs (CAC) are climbing, budgets are tightening, and buyers are increasingly selective, ARR alone won’t fuel growth. When ARR and NRR work together, you not only acquire customers — you keep them, grow them, and build a business that runs on compounding growth.

How FastSpring Helps Grow ARR + NRR

FastSpring is built to power overall SaaS growth, and that includes features to help optimize for both ARR and NRR.

How FastSpring Helps With ARR

• Reducing checkout friction, making it easier for new customers to buy.
• Preventing endless free trials and trial abuse.

Make It Easier for New Customers to Try and Buy

On the ARR front, FastSpring makes it easier to get new customers on board. With customizable trial options, you can build a free trial that works for both your business and your customer base.

You can collect payment details upfront (during checkout) and automatically bill after trial completion, or opt for a cardless free trial. Cardless free trials remove friction from the trial checkout process and minimize perceived risk on the customer’s end, often yielding higher trial signups.

Imagine this: A customer who’s shopped with you before comes back to your store. They saved their payment information the first time around, so with FastSpring’s 1ClickPay feature, they can now pay with just one click — no need to reenter card details. Just one click, and their purchase is on its way.

This reduces checkout friction and makes it supremely easy to buy, on the customer’s end, and it means higher conversation rates and more revenue growth for your business.

Prevent Endless Free Trials

FastSpring customers have the option to enable Trial Hopping Prevention, which prevents trial users from accessing multiple cardless free trials with the same email address. Users who attempt to start a new free trial with one already in progress (or recently expired) are blocked and encouraged to add a payment method and choose a paid upgrade.

This helps to mitigate trial abuse, boost free-to-paid conversions, and cut down on new customer acquisition costs.

How FastSpring Helps With NRR

• Closely monitor subscriptions.
• Make the most of every customer interaction.

Closely Monitor Subscriptions

Understanding your customers is the number one key to higher NRR, and that means you need to be able to proactively monitor a lot more than just revenue and churn. FastSpring offers an in-depth Subscription Overview and Revenue Recognition dashboard that can help here.

Think of it like your business’ subscription reporting command center. The dashboard covers the most important subscription and SaaS metrics:

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR).
• Active customers.
• Active subscriptions.
• Cancellations.
• MRR churn rate.
• Active trials.
• Lifetime value (LTV).

Plus, you can dig even deeper by filtering your MRR data by date, product, country, coupon or discount, relationship type, and more. 

Keep drilling down to dive into:

• Contraction: MRR lost to cancellations and downgrades.
• Existing: MRR from existing customers who haven’t changed their subscriptions.
• Activation: MRR contribution from new customers.
• Expansions: MRR contribution from upgrades by existing customers.

Another great tool for boosting NRR is our Subscription Account Transfer API. It allows you to empower your customers to manage transfer of subscription ownership securely and easily. Whether you’re moving subscriptions due to a change in role, merging duplicate profiles, or because of employee turnover, the Subscription Account Transfer API allows you to automate subscription transfers at scale.

Make the Most of Every Customer Interaction

Picture this: You have a new customer, and they’ve bought something from you — is that the end of the road? Boosting NRR is about what comes next. It’s about guiding customers after that first purchase — say, suggesting products that go well with what they’ve already bought, or nudging them toward a premium subscription. In other words, it’s about upselling and cross-selling — not just to increase your total revenue (though it will do that), but to help make the customer’s experience richer, build loyalty, and retain customers for the long term.

FastSpring’s Product Offers API Suite can help you make the most of every customer interaction with targeted and personalized upsells, cross-sells, and even downsells. Combined with our reporting dashboards, you can see overall key metrics for your subscription products, and then use the Product Offers API suite to target users with value-based upsells. 

Specifically, with the API, you can create and edit product offerings — and showcase these offers right in your customers’ account management portal. The API helps to match the right product to the right customer. It’s a win-win: You see improved ROI and additional revenue, and your customers see an enhanced, more personalized experience and an easier way to manage subscriptions.

Supercharge Your Company Growth With FastSpring

Proactively building to improve both ARR and NRR is about much more than crafting features or pulling in new users. It’s a journey of constant evolution, iterating, and seeking to truly understand what your users need — and how that changes over time — and then bringing them something that genuinely adds value to their lives.

When developing products and navigating the market’s twists and turns, remember that growth and nurturing go hand in hand. That’s where you find a product that doesn’t just exist but lives, breathes, and resonates for years to come.

If you’ve been looking at payment services providers but want a more comprehensive merchant of record to help you grow your business internationally, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, and digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support.

Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post ARR vs. NRR: How These Paired Subscription Metrics Actually Drive Business Growth appeared first on FastSpring.

To succeed in these regions, businesses must support local payment methods–like debit networks, mobile wallets, and bank transfers that locals already trust. Doing so removes friction, increases conversion rates, and drives new revenue.

That’s why we’re launching several key updates in our Spring 2025 release, including:

• UPI Support.
• New Taiwan Dollar (TWD) Support.
• Hipercard and Elo Support in Brazil.
• Checkout Conversion Dashboard.
• Improved Checkout Customizations.

UPI Support Opens the Door to 350M+ Digital Buyers

As a mobile-first economy, and with Indian regulations that are unfriendly to foreign-made payment methods, India’s digital consumer market is heavily reliant on government backed payment rails like UPI. Easy-to-use on mobile, and used by more than 90% of India’s online buyers, UPI eliminates purchase friction for buyers and opens up the vast majority of the Indian market to outside companies. 

With UPI, FastSpring users can:

• Replace low-converting card payments with instant, secure UPI transactions.
• Comply with Indian financial regulations and avoid foreign card blocks.

Learn More about UPI.

Offer Localized Experiences in Emerging Markets With Local Brazilian Cards and TWD in Taiwan

Websites that localize pricing have twice the conversion rate of those that don’t. To further help businesses who are expanding across the globe, we’ve added additional payment methods in Brazil with support for local cards like Elo and Hipercard on top of the domestic only Visa and MasterCard cards as well as enabling TWD in Taiwan. (Coming Q2 2025)

Learn more about Brazilian Cards and TWD.

Track Conversions in Real Time With the Checkout Conversion Dashboard

When selling products, understanding key points in the buyer journey is essential to improving conversion rates. With FastSpring’s new Checkout Conversion Dashboard, get a clear visualization of your users’ checkout conversion journey through monitoring user Sessions, Orders, and Completed Orders. Plus, pinpoint where buyers drop off and why.

With Checkout Conversion Dashboard, FastSpring users can:

• Visualize performance of products across an Area and Funnel Chart.
• Filter data by timeframe, product, country, and segment.
• Understand key points in the buyer journey like Sessions, Orders, and Completed Orders.

Learn more about Checkout Conversion Dashboard.

Improve Conversion Rates With Popup Checkout Themes and New Embedded Options

Brand cohesion throughout the entire purchase journey is a key lever in improving conversion rates. To better support our users, we’ve released the first of our new themes: Dark Theme. This brings a dark mode checkout to our modal popup offering that can be enabled by a simple toggle in checkout settings. Plus, we’ve streamlined our embedded checkout to simplify data entry and remove unnecessary checkout steps.

With the Spring Checkout Improvements, FastSpring users can:

• Match their checkout theme to their site’s branding for a more cohesive buyer experience.
• Reduce required steps in embedded checkout with a single field for MM/YY, fewer input fields, and improved usability icons (Coming Q2 2025)

Learn more about Checkout Customization.

With support for region-specific payments and tools to improve every step of your funnel, FastSpring makes it easier to scale globally, no matter the market you’re expanding into. Ready to learn more? Schedule some time with FastSpring today.

The post FastSpring Launches Support for Indian Payment Method UPI and More Market Expansion Features With Its Spring Product Releases appeared first on FastSpring.

However, navigating these expansion journeys requires strategic planning, local market knowledge, and the right technology infrastructure.

In this guide, we explore five proven strategies that successful LATAM companies have used to establish their presence in Western EU and U.S. markets, with practical insights on overcoming common challenges.

FastSpring is how SaaS, software, digital products, and video game companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need — from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more — so your business can go farther, faster. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself. 

5 Ways LATAM Companies Can Accelerate Their Growth in US and EU Markets

1. Localize Your Payment Infrastructure

One of the most critical factors for successful market entry is adapting your payment infrastructure to meet local expectations and requirements.

Why it matters: Payment preferences vary significantly across regions. While cards dominate in the U.S. (with credit and debit cards accounting for a total of 62% of all payments), European consumers often prefer local payment methods like iDEAL in the Netherlands or Klarna in Sweden.

Success strategy: 

Implement a flexible payment platform (such as a merchant of record) that supports:

• Multiple currencies with dynamic pricing.
• Region-specific payment methods.
• Local tax compliance automation.
• Subscription management across different regulations.

2. Adapt Your Go-to-Market Strategy for Each Region

The marketing and sales approaches that work in LATAM markets often need significant adjustment for Western markets.

Why it matters: Business cultures, buying processes, and customer expectations differ substantially between regions. U.S. businesses typically have faster decision cycles but demand more comprehensive support, while EU organizations often have longer, more committee-driven purchasing processes.

Success strategy:

• Develop region-specific value propositions.
• Adjust pricing strategies based on local market conditions.
• Create localized content marketing strategies.
• Build region-appropriate sales cycles.

3. Navigate Complex Regulatory Landscapes

Companies often face significant regulatory hurdles when expanding to EU and U.S. markets.

Why it matters: Western European markets operate under GDPR, while different U.S. states have varying data protection laws. Additionally, each region has specific requirements regarding financial transactions, business registration, and consumer rights.

Success strategy:

• Implement comprehensive subscription management systems with built-in compliance.
• Automate tax collection and reporting.
• Develop clear data handling policies that meet different regional requirements.
• Partner with experts who understand multi-regional compliance.

4. Build Strategic Partnerships in Target Markets

Successful LATAM companies rarely enter Western markets alone — they leverage strategic partnerships.

Why it matters: Local partners provide invaluable market knowledge, established distribution channels, and credibility in new markets where your brand may be unknown.

Success strategy:

• Identify complementary businesses in target markets.
• Create joint offerings that leverage each company’s strengths.
• Establish integration partnerships with popular local platforms.
• Consider channel sales models where appropriate.

5. Implement Scalable Subscription and Pricing Models

The subscription economy has revolutionized how software and digital services are sold globally, but requirements vary significantly by region.

Why it matters: Different markets have varying tolerance for pricing levels, subscription terms, and billing frequencies. Additionally, managing subscriptions across multiple currencies and tax jurisdictions presents significant operational challenges.

Success strategy:

• Create flexible subscription management systems.
• Implement smart dunning processes to reduce voluntary and involuntary churn.
• Automate currency conversion and regional pricing.
• Build analytics dashboards to track performance by region.
• Design subscription models that align with regional expectations.

The Technology Foundation for Global Expansion

At the core of successful international expansion lies the right technology infrastructure. Many LATAM companies falter not because their product isn’t competitive, but because their backend systems can’t handle the complexities of multi-regional operations.

Key technology requirements include:

• Supporting regional payment methods.
• Multi-currency support with automatic exchange rate updates.
• Global tax calculation and compliance automation.
• Localized checkout experiences.
• Subscription management across different regulatory environments.
• Fraud prevention adapted to regional risk profiles.

Ready to Take Your LATAM Business Global?

Expanding from Latin America into Western European and U.S. markets represents a tremendous growth opportunity, but it requires careful planning and the right infrastructure. The most successful companies recognize that payment processing, subscription management, and compliance aren’t just operational details — they’re strategic advantages when implemented correctly.

FastSpring’s all-in-one merchant of record platform is designed specifically to help companies like yours navigate international expansion with confidence. Our platform handles the complexities of global payments, subscription management, tax compliance, and fraud prevention, allowing you to focus on what you do best: building great products and services.

Talk with a FastSpring expert today to create your customized global expansion strategy and learn how our platform can accelerate your growth in Western European and U.S. markets.

FastSpring is how SaaS, software, digital products, and video game companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need — from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more — so your business can go farther, faster. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself. 

The post 5 Proven Strategies for LATAM Companies to Successfully Enter Western EU and US Markets appeared first on FastSpring.

In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview affiliate marketing veteran and attribution animal Adam Riemer of Adam Riemer Marketing about his thoughts on: 

• What proper affiliate marketing looks like.
• How to weed out fraudsters & shady attribution affiliates.
• How to go about recruiting the RIGHT affiliates to help drive meaningful growth in your business.

If you’ve set up an affiliate program and don’t know what to do next, or you’re looking for tips on how to tame your existing affiliate program, don’t miss this episode of Growth Stage. Listen or watch now!

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will help you grow your subscription software business? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital goods businesses, including software management, VAT and sales tax management, global payments, and consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Jump to video.  |  Jump to transcript.

Podcast Full Interview: Audio

Listen online or find it on more podcast services.

Podcast Full Interview: Video

Transcript

David Vogelpohl (00:04)

Hello everyone and welcome to Growth Stage, a podcast by FastSpring where we discuss how digital product companies grow revenue, build meaningful products, and increase the value of their business. I’m your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community as part of my role at FastSpring. And I love to bring the best of the community to you here on the Growth Stage podcast. In today’s episode, I’m really excited for this topic.

It was a bit of conversation in a Slack community I’m part of and really wanted to bring this topic live here on the podcast. We’re going to be talking about advanced affiliate marketing for SaaS software and digital product companies specifically and joining us for that conversation. I’m proud to bring to Growth Stage Mr. Adam Riemer. Adam, welcome to Growth Stage.

Adam Riemer (00:56)

Hey Dave, thanks for having me.

David Vogelpohl (00:58)

Awesome. So glad to have you here. And of course, I’ve known you for forever and a day and really looking forward to picking your brain here to talk about advanced strategies for digital product companies. And for those watching and listening, Adam is a digital marketing and affiliate marketing veteran. He’s an attribution animal. He’s really well known for proper attribution models and putting value in commissions where value are due.

and he’s going to share his thoughts on what proper affiliate marketing looks like, how to weed out fraudsters and shady affiliates and how to go about recruiting the right affiliates to help drive meaningful growth in your business. So Adam, I know these are topics that a lot of folks are interested in. And so I’m really excited to have you here. So Adam, I’m going to ask you the first question I ask every guest on Growth Stage.

What was the first thing you bought online?

Adam Riemer (02:01)

I remember. So it was in, I think, 1999 or 2000. I heard a record at a nightclub in Pittsburgh that I really liked and I’d already started DJing. And they told me it was only available from one store. And that store happened to be in the Netherlands called Dance Grooves. And so I had to order the LP to be shipped overseas, like…

I think I was still on an AOL connection and I actually ordered the first thing I purchased was a vinyl record to spin Adorave from Dance Grooves. I thought I was going to be a CD but no, that was the first purchase I had ever actually made.

David Vogelpohl (02:45)

It’s actually been a bit of a theme of people have answered this question as I’ve asked it, is it like that extreme need for something and only being able to get it online? That sounds really interesting. So how long was it after that roughly before you bought music directly, like a digital song?

Adam Riemer (03:08)

I didn’t really have digital back then because iPods weren’t out yet and neither were the… iPod was the first one, yeah, and then it became the iPhone. So yeah, it was a long time before. I was still burning CDs and everything. The first digital product I bought probably wasn’t until the last 15 years.

David Vogelpohl (03:21)

Nice.

Okay, makes sense.

Adam Riemer (03:30)

I just, I really like holding books. I really like, I don’t know, I liked having the movie collection. Now I’ve switched. I prefer my movies to just be a couple of clicks away, but I still love books. Like I don’t find the same pleasure out of an reader that I do holding the actual book, flipping the page, going into the bookstore. I love that. I do shop for books online a lot, especially if I’m on the road and I rip through one, I need the next one delivered. It makes it easier to go online, but I really like holding books.

David Vogelpohl (03:59)

Nice. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about Adam Riemer Marketing and what you do there. And I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’re the owner and CEO or something like that. Is that right, Adam?

Adam Riemer (04:12)

Yeah, at least for now.

I need to find somebody that can actually manage it for me so I can do the things that I love, which is the marketing and working with my team where I fall flat is working with the clients because I, as you said, I tend to be a little bit hard headed and I get a bit passionate and that’s not always a good thing. It’s a good thing that I’m passionate about the work, but not always for the clients. So what we specialize in what our strengths are is conversion rate optimization, top funnel and value adding affiliate programs.

SEO work as well as content marketing and strategy. We do help companies with their lifecycle marketing which includes email and win back and at different stages in the customer journey what are their needs now and how do you develop and that includes consumer products as well as B2B, lead gen and the service space.

David Vogelpohl (05:03)

Excellent. So kind of a full service digital marketing agency, if you will. And I heard you mentioned as part of that value added affiliate marketing. And so this is kind of a nice segue into my first question on the topic of this podcast, which is what does value added or proper affiliate marketing mean to you? What defines that?

Adam Riemer (05:29)

So the way that we define value adding is would the sale have occurred without the affiliate touch point? Did the affiliate touch point actually have some form of financial gain or does it create a financial loss or is it a neutral financial touch point?

So an example of that would be if all of the sales are happening at the very end of the sale and the transaction, somebody’s just looking for a coupon code, if you removed them from the affiliate program, would that consumer still come through and would they be coming through your funnel and converting at the same rate? If the answer is yes, which most of the time it turns out to be yes, it’s a no value affiliate and you’re probably taking a financial hit.

if that same affiliate also has top funnel traffic suppose you sell t -shirts or suppose you’re a CRM software company and you are showing up from an influencer that does show up for the coupon phrase but also has a lot of traffic coming in from their YouTube channel around the best CRM systems how to optimize your sales funnels and they’re funneling off of that traffic that you cannot reach on your own at that point you have to test is the top

funnel more profitable than the bottom funnel and by allowing that bottom funnel and am I chasing away smaller partners that know they’re going to lose some sales to that.

So it’s a really fine tuned game of cat and mouse, but it’s easy to track. The one thing you’re going to run into is nobody has your best interests in mind as a business owner or as a marketing team. The networks make money off of the actual touch point and conversions that come through their network by allowing this to happen and saying, well, it’s part of the customer journey. They make more money. So they’re going to be encouraging you to work with some of these bad behaviors, use your data and understand how it goes.

One other touch point is a review.

A review does add value and a review can help convince a customer to convert with you over another, same with comparisons. But what happens if you would use an ambassador instead of an affiliate and you would help that ambassador optimize for your terms? That ambassador now shows up for your brand press review. You have to pay a one -time fee and a one -time fee only. You no longer pay commissions every single time a customer’s in the review. You have to pay an upfront cost.

But in the long run, you save a lot of money because you’re no longer paying commissions over and over and over. And now you have the chance for a full value add in top funnel affiliate program.

David Vogelpohl (08:03)

So as I think of folks that are running digital product businesses like SaaS and software, it’s a lot of companies that are 50-, 100-person teams or less. And so they look at affiliate marketing from the outside, and they see this complexity, and they see this need for audits and this need to be picky with who they partner with. And I really like how you simplified it in that statement when you said,

Would the sale have occurred without the affiliate touch point? And you gave a variety of examples there, and I love extremes for a minute. So a really bad affiliate would be maybe someone with malware that’s stuffing cookies in browsers. So that would, that sale would have occurred if that bad actor had not have done that. So that’s an example of someone doing something really bad. And then you were talking about some gray zones a little bit where.

You had maybe a coupon site that was primarily, you know, getting their sales at the end of the sale. And then you were talking, I think about comparison and review sites a little bit where maybe it’s a little bit more in the middle of the decision process. But I like that litmus test of would the sale have occurred without the affiliate touch point. And I guess where your point is, is if the answer is no, then this is where it falls outside the realm of proper.

But when the answer is yes or maybe, how do you think about that blended value? Is it like all commissions are none or do you think about splitting it up or maybe weighting it based on the level of value that you think affiliate’s driving?

Adam Riemer (09:44)

I’d definitely lower the commission if it’s a lower value touch point. And that’s a proper thing to do. It’s the same as when you’re going with lifetime commissions on recurring. What if the person promoted you for a year and then decided to stop should they still be getting paid six and seven years later when they’re promoting competitors. That’s up to you to update your program terms and conditions and make it very clear.

you could add in a clause that says if you stop promoting us and haven’t driven new customers within a year, we’re going to turn off the lifetime commissions.

we’re looking for long term relationships and stability, not one and done referrals to friends where you make money forever. This is a partnership relationship. So it’s up to you to determine. You could set up attribution lines where if there’s a top funnel click and a mid funnel click, you give the top funnel 75% in the mid funnel 25% of the sale and that’s going to split it nicely for you. But if that top funnel has room to grow and someone else comes along and offers them more money and has an

equal average order value and has an equal type of commission, they’re going to be more profitable. So you’re going to lose that top funnel partner. So you have to tread lightly. You have to make exceptions. If it’s a no value, low value, I just say kick them out. Why lose money? You could be actually profitable with your PPC campaigns. For example, there’s a keyword that’s sometimes profitable, sometimes not. Track the low value conversions to see if there’s a PPC click too. We just had this happen.

Turned out if we remove those low value and no value partners, PPC became profitable and we could reinvest that money into the profitable keywords.

David Vogelpohl (11:23)

Okay, so really focusing both on the attractiveness to the right affiliates and then leveraging your budget where it’s most profitable for you relative to the affiliates, especially you’re spending your time on. So again, if I’m a smaller company operating an affiliate program, I guess I’m gonna wanna be really choosy about who I let into it and think about their role in the funnel.

and how much I want to reward that. And then you also kind of brought up, well, there’s other people trying to get those rankings or the spots on those affiliates web pages as well. And so I got to think about that competitive aspect of it. Okay, so we’ve talked about affiliates that can cause problems, affiliates that do very bad things like cookie stuffing or affiliates that just don’t provide a lot of value. So what type of affiliates do you like focusing on recruiting?

Which ones do you want to sign up for your program or which ones do you help your clients actively reach out to recruit?

Adam Riemer (12:27)

So we go after the evergreen ones first, ones that have the ability to show up inside a YouTube search result, inside a Google search result, or a long-term social media channel with a relevant audience. By that I mean Pinterest has a different audience than TikTok, than Facebook, than Instagram. And so if your audience isn’t there, who cares if they have a million followers, you’re not going to reach them. So we go after the ones that have the long-term reach.

a webpage or a YouTube video has the opportunity to drive traffic for a few years versus an Instagram post which might last for a few days. By building the program first with evergreen copy or recruiting insights that are topically relevant and able to show up for those phrases, we’re building a nice foundation. After that, we go after the short-term boosts.

So that would be your influencers, your Instagramers, your LinkedIn people, because a LinkedIn post with a new algorithm could last for a few months. We recruit them and we line up posts about the right times a year, like right before busy season, during busy season, or at slow seasons where they may be able to influence a boost in sales. And that way we can constantly try to hit our numbers. It takes a long time to do because you have to recruit, then you have to get them to sign up, then you have to get them to agree.

Once the content’s created, for example, with the evergreen, you have to then hope it actually shows up in the search engines. Once it does, you have to hope the readers click to your link and then you have to apply your conversion rate. So after all of that, if you have a 5 % conversion rate, you have to wait till 20 unique visitors have clicked through to even have the chance at a first sale. So it’s a very, very long-term thing.

David Vogelpohl (14:08)

Makes sense on the long game. If I boil that down, thinking about the types of affiliates you were talking about going after, it really sounded like it boiled down to people publishing content. And obviously, people publishing content that’s relevant to a recommendation for a particular type of product.

The word affiliate is a big word. Matter of fact, in a lot of affiliate networks, they’re called publishers. But affiliates can take different flavors. With SaaS software and digital product companies, do you find that there are technology partners that use affiliate marketing to refer customers for products that might be symbiotic? Like maybe I have an SEO product that I’m going to recommend some email marketing product as part of my flow. Is that the other, do you look at?

recruiting those types of affiliates as well.

Adam Riemer (15:04)

Yes, anyone that has a relevant audience could be an affiliate. So I’ll give you a few examples. Some of our B2B clients have perks portals and you’ll find affiliate links in there. Other times when I’m speaking of conferences, I’ll disclose that this is an affiliate link and I’ll put up a QR code or a URL on the screen so people can do it and they can follow, people can click,

start a trial and have an experience because the tool or the software is relevant to the presentation or the workshop I’m giving and the way to get that exposure is to have me as a customer and as an affiliate. Others do a loyalty and rewards program with a cross promotion so there’s a lot of different ways you can do it. There’s also email blasts with complimentary companies. You just want to make sure that open rates are a very skewed and incorrect metric. You want the actual click -throughs and conversion rates.

just like an influencer. They only have influence if people are taking actions. The action you’re most interested in as an affiliate is taking out their wallets.

David Vogelpohl (16:01)

I like it. I like it. One of my favorite sayings is sort by conversions. And it sounds like you share that sentiment on some level. So when we talk about recruiting, I think there’s like the idea of like, where do you get a list to recruit from? And how do you go about that? One of my favorite approaches whenever I take over an affiliate program is to look at the short tail keywords that we’re bidding on and search and just see who ranks for them for like a list.

But what do you recommend? How do people start to build a list of affiliates to recruit? And then how do they go about organizing and pulling all that off? They’re using CRM’s help me understand how you like to approach that.

Adam Riemer (16:46)

So what we do is we will use that same PPC data and SEO data because if you already have the top ranking, what are the rankings below you? Anyone that’s a publisher is a potential affiliate and we know that the conversion rate is high. That gives us the ability to create a forecast. If you add us in here, the potential income you could be making over your CPM ads on the publisher site is X, Y, and Z per month and at that point,

we’ve made a strong case for why they should include our client within that post and the money they could be making.

We use BuzzStream that’s our preferred tool for recruitment and it doesn’t actually do the recruitment on its own although I believe they have something in beta right now but it does give our team own ability to share the messages what’s working what’s not working yes we’ve already reached out to this person so don’t touch them I’m already on it or you can reassign it hey this is better suited to David’s needs and David’s skill set so I’m going to tag and pass it over to them it’s just a really nice funnel and system to cross

remote and track your recruitment efforts.

David Vogelpohl (17:50)

So this sounds like, I mean, it’s effectively a sales process. It’s just what you’re effectively selling as a partnership for the revenue for the affiliate, revenue share of the affiliate commissions. Is that a good way to think about affiliate recruiting? Is that it’s very similar to a sales process with like an account management backend or how do you think about that?

Adam Riemer (18:10)

Yeah, unlike a backlink for SEO where you just need the link to your website, with affiliate, you have to get that link and you have to get revenue from it. So it’s all about the relationship. It’s about building trust. It’s about ensuring there’s some form of gain for both companies. It has to be mutually beneficial to work and be copacetic.

David Vogelpohl (18:31)

You know, thinking about using SEO and targeted keyword data to discover affiliates, are there any other, like do you use like Ahrefs looking for like backlinks or how do you, what are some other discovery methods for like affiliate recruiting lists?

Adam Riemer (18:45)

So I personally don’t use Ahrefs, it’s a good tool. The services that they offered, they canceled, they lost their license or something. So I closed my account down years ago, but I know a lot of people that love them and I have a couple of clients that love them. So I wouldn’t count them out. I actually use SEMrush, which is their biggest competitor,

for a lot of tracking and data and discovery. But if you want for specifically SEO style at— affiliates, Majestic is going to be your good one to go to. And I don’t use Majestic, but I do highly recommend them for this. And what you can do with Majestic is you can plug in your competitors affiliate link style, as long as the merchant ID is first in the path. And you can actually find out exactly who’s promoting you and generate a list because it’s the same thing as a backlink profile.

David Vogelpohl (19:16)

Yeah

Adam Riemer (19:34)

which is just all of the links that the database can find and Majestic has the largest in the world.

You can also go in and find citations, mentions of the competitor’s name and then you can do is this on an .edu site, is this on a major media site, and you can funnel through there and figure out where they’re being mentioned with a direct backlink that helps their SEO. By replacing those backlinks with affiliate links, one you’re causing damage to your competitor’s SEO making it easier for you to climb and replace them in the search engines, AND you’re taking the traffic they were getting for free and

you are now getting that traffic. The benefit to the person that was featuring them is they can make money whereas they were losing money previously by sending the traffic for free. So it’s a really compelling place and it crosses multiple channels. If you do get onto the major media and you haven’t been featured before there’s a chance you can now feature that logo in your PR bar which is a trust builder for consumers and may help increase your conversion rates. So affiliate has an impact on multiple channels as long as you’re doing it smart.

David Vogelpohl (20:42)

Awesome. That sounds like some good recruitment and list building tips. I know that that’s a deep well to draw from, and it’s interesting how many opportunities there are to surface when you’re going deep on affiliate recruitment. You talked before about types of affiliates that you like to keep out of the program, those that don’t add a lot of, you know,

I guess value at the bottom of the funnel or to the transaction, would it happen without their presence kind of thing? So if you put yourself in the shoes of, you know, an SMB technology company and they wanted to keep it lean and mean in the beginning, what sort of affiliates would you recommend they say, you know, no, or not now to?

Adam Riemer (21:33)

I would avoid the review sites first and I would look at the types. I would go for complimentary companies. That’s the first one. Number two, look for the people in that space that have email lists and try to get a quarterly blast or a feature. You may have to start with a media buy at first and then when you see the conversions that come through, like look, if you became an affiliate, you would have had this many conversions.

Now you have to remember one thing, an email list is the same email list. It’s constantly growing, which is good, but these people had already seen your business before, so the results may be smaller each time you do it. At the same time, there’s a certain amount of touch points that have to happen in between. So that would be a really good one. And then look at the YouTubers, especially in the SMB and SaaS space, because they have the opportunity to rank in Google search as well as on YouTube. And a lot of people are looking for solutions and a visual and verbal queue

is a really good way to learn how to do something whether it’s a B2B software system enterprise or small business or even fixing something in your house. Having that visual builds the trust and shows you what it’s going to be like to use if it’s going to be adoptable and adaptable to your clients teams and then if you are the one being demonstrated in the video it builds the trust that your software really is a solution.

David Vogelpohl (22:53)

Adam in that response you had mentioned avoiding review sites in the beginning and I feel like many of the technology product companies I’ve worked with over the years. It’s like one of the biggest sort affiliates in their niche is like. I don’t know “top 10 X service” in their review sites, but they’re they’re ranking for like

“top provider does X types of queries.” Do you recommend folks avoid that or are you thinking avoid it where they say like I have a review of your brand? The latter?

Adam Riemer (23:28)

 was your company, David, I would say avoid letting people and going after sites that say FastSpring reviews. This is just your own customers. This is just your own traffic that they’re intercepting. If it’s the best software to do X, Y, and Z, that’s something that adds value. It doesn’t have your brand, but it features your brand as a solution. So that’s a touch point that’s going to bring someone to you.

if they also have a review after but that review is maybe 20% of the traffic coming through and that other 80% has a really strong conversion rate then I would say both are fine and keep them just make sure there’s advertising disclosures on the top of each page.

David Vogelpohl (24:08)

Now, yeah, I was going to say on the disclosure side, so like when you when you have these affiliates that are running review sites about your brand and you’re paying commissions and really in any case, you need disclosures that it’s a paid ad, but in particular when you have these types of reviews or assessments, do you have anything else to add on that front? I’m guessing that’s pretty important.

Adam Riemer (24:33)

It’s, I’m not a lawyer. I’m not licensed to give any legal advice in any way, shape or form. So what I’ve been told by different clients and each client has different policies is to just make sure it’s clear, concise, visible, and states exactly what happens. So if the list and if the rankings on the list are based on how much the affiliates making, well,

David Vogelpohl (24:35)

Right here, yeah.

Adam Riemer (24:58)

they need to disclose that. It needs to say the amount we make influences the review and where they are in our list. Just like they have to say, I’m getting paid to feature you. If they were just featuring you on that list out of the kindness of their heart, they weren’t going to make any money in commissions, probably don’t need a disclosure because there’s no compensation. They just genuinely think you’re a good service. But if there’s money, whether it’s free product, a review, a year subscription or a trial account,

that has to be disclosed and before the brand is exposed to the consumer.

David Vogelpohl (25:31)

Yes, so if I if I really like a product and I write a review about it, but I want to make money from the review and I use an affiliate link, I can do that as long as I disclose it effectively on the affiliate side. And then you were also referencing other types of sites where the ranking is based on the revenue. Now, I think a lot of people think that means the commissions that they’re paid by the affiliates. I’m going to pay you $100 to sign up. My competitor is going to pay you $50 to sign up or $200 to sign up.

But it’s more than that, right? It’s it’s like the number they sell and the total amount of commissions they make, not just the amount per unit is, I mean, is this a factor in how they’ll rank the revenue from these review listings?

Adam Riemer (26:17)

Yes, exactly. So most of those listicle sites and most of the media companies, they have an internal EPC, earnings per click, which is separate from a network EPC, which is also a flawed and fake metric. And what happens with their internal earnings per click? They’re taking the amount of money they make, which is a combination of the total people that have clicked through. So if everyone at your company is clicking on those links, you’ve just lowered the earnings per click.

David Vogelpohl (26:30)

Haha.

Adam Riemer (26:44)

if they’re getting one click in a sale each time because it’s a review or a coupon the earnings per click is going to be massively high. So that’s why they break it down by page and if that page is generating a high EPC the algorithm and some of them are now automating this you may see in the morning you’re in the fifth position and in the afternoon you’re in the second position and at night you’re in the tenth position that’s because their algorithm is automatically updating the template and moving these around to where and when they’re most profitable.

And now there’s actually some affordable software out there. I think they’re called a Affilimate. They came across my radar about a year ago and they built one of those tools that the major media companies use for consumers, or not for consumers, but for some of the smaller publishing houses and affiliates. And I was blown away and that takes a lot. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. So they are building something pretty cool and special.

David Vogelpohl (27:14)

So it’s a.

So if you want to get listed, and whether they use that tool or something else, but if you want to get listed on one of these sites, it’s a game, right? It’s your price point, how much in commissions you’re willing to pay, your ability to convert those users, and all of that together results in an amount of money for them. So you might have higher commissions by three times as much, but if you convert less than three times as often, you’ll have a worse deal with somebody paying lower commissions. And so…

Adam Riemer (28:08)

Correct and use, sorry, you said something interesting there which is your price point. Having the lowest price point means lowest commission if you’re not doing flat fee. So having a medium or a competitive price point or being the brand and having really strong branding and a brand presence could cause a similar conversion rate and because you have a higher price point even with an equal commission, if the conversion rate’s the same, you generate a higher EPC for the affiliate.

David Vogelpohl (28:10)

Yeah, go ahead.

Adam Riemer (28:37)

But as a founder and an owner, you have to remember your baby’s not that special and it’s not the prettiest baby out there. So you have to think of it from a consumer standpoint. Does the consumer understand the brand value? And if not, you need to work with your marketing team and your branding team to say, here’s what we could be saying. How do we get the consumers to understand this better? And sometimes it’s to remove the branding and focus on the selling points and the value, which means getting rid of all the fluff and all the buzzwords. That’s something very hard for founders to let go of.

David Vogelpohl (29:08)

Yeah, it’s a good point. Like, “What do you do?” is a pretty simple question that we answer in very complex ways. My last question for you here today is we’ve talked about what running a proper affiliate program looks like. We talked about recruiting, building lists, reaching out.

What when I have an affiliate and they’re part of my program, how do you think about getting them to keep referring customers or to refer more customers? Like how do you think about the management of those relationships?

Adam Riemer (29:43)

I keep notes on every single affiliate inside their affiliate accounts. That way if something ever happens to me or if I stop managing and I have a team member take over, they’ll see exactly what happened and one of those notes is motivators for that partner.

We have some partners that are making 10 and $30 ,000 a month and they don’t care about the money they’re making enough even though a higher commission is always going to be attractive. Sometimes they just want like a nice food treat and that’s when Gold Belly comes in and I’ll ship them something really cool or something fun like there’s one of my favorite gifts to send is the not fried chicken ice cream. It looks like a piece of fried chicken but it’s actually a really good ice cream and the bone inside the chicken drumstick is like a Kit Kat type of

candy. And so things like that. It keeps us in front of them It keeps the goodwill going and then other people are impacted by money. So what you’ll do is you’ll run cash incentives, you’ll run bonuses if you can hit this goal over last year what you did, then we’ll pay you this type of bonus. Some people want recognition and I’ve sent trophies and plaques for them to hang on the wall if they’re a consultant and they— like a divorce lawyer, for example

and they’re sending people in for housing and to get a new house and real estate leads. What we’ll do is we’ll put a top XYZ company partner plaque for them to put on the wall, which builds trust in the brand. And the person may actually start filling it out from their office through their affiliate link. Everyone’s motivated differently and keep track of their motivators cater to those. It’s not a one size fits all, especially in the B2B space.

David Vogelpohl (31:13)

I like it. What a great point to end on. Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been really educational. And as always, I love nerding out with you about affiliate marketing. Of course, of course. If you’d like to learn more about what Adam is up to, you can check him out on LinkedIn or visit adamriemer.me, R-I-E-M-E-R is how you spell Riemer. Thanks everyone for listening to the Growth Stage Podcast.

Adam Riemer (31:24)

Thank you for having me, David.

David Vogelpohl (31:41)

If you’d like to learn more about FastSpring, you can check us out at FastSpring.com. Thanks everybody and have a great day.

The post EP21: Advanced Affiliate Marketing for Saas, Software, and Digital Products appeared first on FastSpring.

New Growth & Retention Features

1ClickPay

Designed to enhance your customers’ shopping experience, 1ClickPay streamlines the checkout process, reduces purchase friction, and makes it easier than ever for your customers to complete transactions.

Check out our 1ClickPay product announcement.

Offers API

Offers API is a revenue catalyst that enables businesses to maximize revenue at every customer interaction. Whether it’s at the point of sale or point of cancellation, Offers API strategically surfaces upsell, cross-sell, add-ons, and alternative offers to prospective buyers.

Want to implement Offers API? Take a look at our documentation.

Trial Hopping Prevention

With FastSpring, secure your product-led growth with Trial Hopping Prevention. We don’t just prevent users from signing up for multiple trials with the same email — we also encourage them to convert to a paid plan, maximizing the value they get from your products.

Refreshed Subscriptions Features

In addition to these new features, we’ve rolled out several other subscription tools in the past year. Tools such as Subscription Reporting, Trials With/Without Payment Method, Proration Preview API, and Change History API all optimize growth and retention to unlock your business potential.

Subscription Reporting

Designed to help you understand the ins and outs of subscriptions across your business, subscription reporting provides insight into MRR, Active Users, Trial Status, Churn Rates, and much more. Drill down into the dashboards and filter by date, product, country, and more to understand exactly what impact your subscriptions have on your bottom line.

Take a look at our reporting features here.

Trial With/Without Payment Method

Configure trials in the way that best suits your business and customers, directly within the FastSpring app. FastSpring’s Trials With/Without Payment Method feature allows you to minimize developer implementation and maintenance time, consolidate solutions, and open up new business models without needing to get additional third party support.

Interested? Here’s our documentation.

Proration Preview and Subscription Plan Change History API

Help your customers carefully understand their subscriptions — and give them insight into what could be — with our Proration Preview and Subscription Plan Change History APIs. Not only do we surface prorated estimates of proposed plan changes to your account management portal, but we also allow you to pull the entire history of your customers’ subscriptions to give them a clear record of their accounts.

Check out our announcements for the Proration Preview and Subscription Plan Change History APIs.

Interested in learning more about how FastSpring supports subscriptions? Sign up for a demo here. Or, are you interested in learning about our subscription features not highlighted here? Go take a look at our subscriptions page.

The post Q3 2023 FastSpring Feature Release: Achieving Subscription Growth, Faster appeared first on FastSpring.

When you’re dealing with global sales, taxes are a necessary part of everything you do. For many SaaS companies, being able to accurately apply tax exemptions across the globe is a vital step for accuracy in quotes as well as reporting when tax time comes around.

We’re excited to announce new updates to how we handle tax exemptions in Digital Invoicing. Further, we’ve made improvements to how we handle tax exemptions in Japan to be in compliance with new regulations starting October 1, 2023.

Digital Invoicing Now Supports Tax Exemption When Creating Quotes

The first of these updates is how tax exemptions are added to Digital Invoicing’s Quotes within the FastSpring platform. Now users are able to add a tax exemption ID to quotes created within the FastSpring App and from the Quotes API. This change applies to all supported countries where FastSpring collects taxes.

Not only does this simplify workflows for FastSpring users who previously had to retroactively add the tax exemption on the invoice, but it also adds additional clarity to pricing for prospects receiving a quote—which will contribute to increased customer acquisition.

Example of the new changes to FastSpring’s Digital Invoicing Quotes in-app.

This change also includes the requirement for zip or postal codes for both the USA and Canada. Now we can more accurately validate the tax exemption numbers at the time of quote creation. These changes apply to both user generated quotes as well as quotes generated by end-customers of FastSpring users.

Note: To enable tax exemption for orders in the USA, please reach out to our team at support@fastspring.com.

Expanded Support for Tax Exemption in Orders From Japan

Tax Exemption

In addition to the changes we’ve made to Quotes, we’ve also expanded support for tax exemption to orders in Japan. Now users looking to expand their B2B offerings in this region will have access to new tax exempt features. B2B users that input a valid JCT tax ID can receive a 0% rate and report the tax directly under reverse charge accounting.

Qualified Invoice System (QIS)

Japan’s new invoicing system rolls out October 1, 2023!

What does this mean? After October 1, buyers purchasing from non-registered QIS issuers will no longer be able to claim input JCT credits on any consumption tax paid. Credits can only be generated on purchases from official registered issuers like FastSpring. FastSpring registered as a qualified issuer before the Oct 1 date.

Find out more about Japan QIS here.

Interested in learning more about any of these features or have questions about your tax liabilities for games or software sales in Japan? Sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo today.

The post Announcing: Digital Invoicing Updates and Tax Exemptions for B2B Transactions in Japan appeared first on FastSpring.

Trials are the gateway to growth for many SaaS and software companies. Understanding the dynamics of those trials is at the heart of optimized trial conversion rates — which helps you achieve product-led growth. 

Today, FastSpring is excited to announce our new Trial Reporting Dashboard! It empowers users with real-time, data-driven insights so you can fine tune your trial offerings and achieve your growth and retention goals.

What’s Inside the Trial Reporting Dashboard?

In the trial reporting dashboard, FastSpring users will find an abundance of data to help them understand what is going on with their trial program. From tracking active trials in real time to understanding trial behavior with average days enrolled in trials, drive invaluable insights to shape trial strategy.

Trial Type Highlights

Gain a clear view of trial activations by type, including: trial with a payment method, trial without a payment method, and paid trials. Then use that data to shape the types of trials that your customers want, to drive more initial acquisition and adoption.

Trial Conversions or Cancellations Over Time

Understand exactly how each type of trial performs over time, and measure against other data — such as new product launches, promotions, regions, and more — to see why your users are converting or churning and make changes accordingly.

Data Segmentation

Apply filters by product, geography, or customer segment to get a clearer picture of the goings-on behind your trial performance. With this data, you’ll be able to optimize your trial approach for different user groups, uncover regional trends, and take your conversions to the next level.

Looking to try out the trial reporting dashboard with the premier merchant of record in the market? Sign up for a demo or check out the platform yourself.

Want to know more about how our trial reporting dashboard works? Take a look at our product documentation for more details.

The post Announcing: Comprehensive Reporting for Free and Paid Trials appeared first on FastSpring.

• Subscription management and recurring billing 
• Checkout 
• Global payment processing
• Reporting and analytics
• Pricing
• Customer reviews

We’ll start with a deep dive into FastSpring — our end-to-end payment solution (i.e., subscription management, payment processing, and more) for SaaS companies. Then, we’ll cover five more Recurly alternatives for companies in all industries. 

In this guide: 

1. FastSpring: Subscription Management, Payment Processing, and Much More for SaaS and Software Companies
2. Chargebee: Robust Subscription Management Software
3. Chargify: Subscription Billing Solution for B2B SaaS
4. Zuora: Monetization Platform for Any Business
5. Stax Bill: Recurring Billing for Small Businesses
6. Zoho Subscriptions: Online Subscription Billing Software

FastSpring does more than just process payments and help you manage subscriptions. We also take on transaction liability for you. Request a demo or sign up for a free account to learn more.

FastSpring: Subscription Management, Payment Processing, and Much More for SaaS and Software Companies

FastSpring helps SaaS companies (and companies selling digital goods and one-time downloads) manage the entire payment lifecycle, from subscription management to remitting end-of-year taxes. 

Beyond just providing the necessary software, we’re your Merchant of Record (MoR). As your MoR, we take on transaction liability for you which means we take the lead on compliance, audits, chargebacks, and more. 

Create Custom Trial, Subscription, and Recurring Billing Models That Are Fully Compliant with Transaction Laws and Regulations

When setting up subscription plans and recurring billing models, one point that’s often overlooked is whether or not each plan is compliant with transaction laws and regulations. Most companies are aware of regulations such as GDPR and other consumer privacy laws. However, many companies are unaware of the transaction laws of each location where they do business. 

For example, in some countries (e.g., Canada and Korea) customers are eligible by law for a prorated refund if they cancel their subscription before the end of the payment period. Another example is that the Reserve Bank of India limits automatic payments to ₹15,000 (approximately $180) — anything over that amount has to be manually approved by the customer. 

These are just two examples. Considering the laws are constantly changing, it’s understandable that many companies have a hard time staying up-to-date with them. However, you could face heavy fines or be banned from transacting in a specific region if you don’t comply with these laws.

Some subscription management platforms will send out mass updates when they learn about new laws and regulations, but ultimately, your company will be held liable. 

Unlike most subscription management companies, FastSpring takes on transaction liability for you, which means our team: 

• Stays up-to-date on the transaction laws and regulations of every jurisdiction you transact in.
• Makes sure your billing models are compliant with each jurisdiction.
• Takes the lead on audits. 

In addition to helping you stay compliant, FastSpring provides flexibility for setting up trials, subscriptions, and recurring billing models. For example, you can set up: 

• Free, paid, or discounted trials of any length (with or without collecting payment details).
• Fixed, per seat, metered, tiered, and bundled billing.
• Prorated billing to accommodate upgrades and downgrades mid-cycle.
• Automatic or manual renewal.
• Upsells, cross-sells, one-time fees, discounts, and gifts.
• And much more …

Related: Manage B2B Orders in One Place with Digital Invoicing

Most pricing and billing models can be set up without code but you’ll also have access to our API and webhooks library for unique models. Our developers are also available to help you build the perfect solution and answer any questions. 

Related: An In-Depth Guide to Subscription Billing Platforms (+ 5 Options)

Customer Portal

With FastSpring, your customers will have access to a self-serve portal where they can manage their payment details and plans (e.g., upgrade, downgrade, add users, and more). 

The portal is fully customizable so it can match your visual brand, but it’s managed by FastSpring, so that your team can focus on more strategic tasks. 

Have Complete Control over Every Aspect of Checkout

FastSpring offers advanced checkout customization options so you can create a modern, intuitive, branded checkout experience that drives conversions. Here’s an overview of those options: 

• Three versions of checkout: You can choose to embed checkout directly on your webpage, have a checkout popup over your webpage, or send your customers to a fully branded web storefront hosted by FastSpring. Both Embedded Checkout and Popup Checkout are easily implemented with just a few lines of pre-written code. The Web Storefront is hosted on a FastSpring webpage (so your team doesn’t have to build everything from scratch) but you’ll have several options to customize the page.

• Customization tools: To change the color, font, and more of the checkout, you can use FastSpring branding tools or CSS overrides. To customize the buyer journey leading up to the checkout, you can use FastSpring’s JavaScript Store Builder Library (SBL). The JavaScript SBL lets you add FastSpring elements to create upsell funnels, a dynamic pricing slider, and more to optimize each purchase.
• Localization features: FastSpring supports dozens of languages and currencies around the world. You can let your customers choose their preferred language and currency or let FastSpring make the appropriate selection based on their location.

• Personalized developer support: Many payment solutions offer personalized support to their bigger clients and leave the smaller companies to fend for themselves. At FastSpring, our developers (and our entire staff) are happy to help you build the right payment solution and answer any questions you may have, regardless of your monthly revenue. 

Accept Dozens of Preferred Payment Methods Around the World

Many SaaS companies try to increase conversion rates by offering more payment methods. However, adding new payment methods is more complicated than simply adding the logo of the payment networks to your checkout screen. Each payment provider will have different regulations regarding fraud, chargebacks, privacy protection, and more before they’re willing to approve transactions with your business. 

If you’re working with international card networks and issuing banks, it gets even more complicated. For example, credit card networks are more likely to approve transactions where the payment gateway is in the same location as the buyer, which means you’ll need to work with multiple payment gateways to maintain high conversion rates. 

Most recurring billing platforms offer pre-built integrations with various payment processors, however, you’ll still have to pay for and manage each of these payment processors separately. 

With FastSpring, you automatically have access to multiple payment processors that specialize in global transactions — without any additional fees. 

You can easily start accepting dozens of payment methods within the first day of working with us. FastSpring automatically routes each payment through the payment gateway with the highest authorization rates for that location and retries failed payments using a secondary gateway. 

Related: Top 10 International Payment Gateways: An In-Depth Guide

Plus, we take the lead on: 

• Compliance with card networks and issuing banks.
• Fraud detection.
• Chargebacks.

Bonus: Let FastSpring Handle Sales Tax, VAT, and GST for You

SaaS and software companies didn’t always have to gather and remit sales tax or VAT. However, more states, countries, and other jurisdictions are writing new laws that change that. Now, SaaS and software companies have to file and remit sales tax or VAT in many jurisdictions — and many jurisdictions are enforcing these laws more strongly than before. 

Learn more: Can SaaS Companies Afford to Ignore Sales Taxes and VAT?

Some online payment processors will help you gather sales tax or VAT, however, few of them will support all the forms of consumption tax SaaS businesses run into when transacting globally. Plus, you’ll be on your own to file and remit those taxes. If you don’t file them in the correct way, at the correct time, or in the correct amount, you could face heavy penalties. 

FastSpring customers don’t have to worry about any of this because FastSpring takes the lead on calculating, gathering, filing and remitting sales tax, VAT, and GST for you. We also take the lead on any tax-related audits. 

Drill Into What Is and Isn’t Working with Built-in Reporting

FastSpring Analytics and Reporting automatically tracks key metrics regarding your subscriptions and revenue, such as monthly recurring revenue (MRR), net sales by product and region, refund rates, and much more.

FastSpring takes these metrics and displays them in meaningful reports so you always have the information you need at your fingertips. These reports are divided into two main dashboards: Revenue Overview and Subscription Overview. 

If you don’t find the report you need, you can create (and save) custom reports. Our team is also available to help you design the right report and answer any questions you may have. 

Finally, any report can be downloaded as a CSV, PNG, or XLSX file. 

Related: SaaS Billing Software: 7 Tools in 3 Categories & How to Choose – FastSpring

All Features for One Flat Rate Fee

The entire FastSpring platform is available for one flat-rate fee based on the volume of transactions you move through FastSpring. Plus, you’ll only be charged when a transaction takes place.

Reach out to our team to find the price that works for you (or sign up for a free account). 

FastSpring Customer Reviews

FastSpring currently has 4.5 stars on G2 with over 184 reviews. 

Here’s what some of our customers had to say:

If you think FastSpring could be the right Recurly alternative for your business, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

Five More Recurly Competitors

Here are five more Recurly competitors that compare according to the following categories: subscription management and recurring billing, checkout, global payment processing, reporting and analytics, pricing, and customer reviews.

Chargebee: Popular Subscription Management Software

Chargebee is a popular choice for setting up customer subscription plans. Chargebee offers built-in integrations with many different types of software including ERPs, accounting software such as QuickBooks, and more. 

Here’s how Chargebee compares in each category: 

• Subscription management and recurring billing: This is what Chargebee is best known for. They offer a lot of different pricing and billing options, and customers report that the platform is easy to use.
• Checkout: Chargebee offers two versions of checkout — in-app (their version of popup checkout) and full web page. The full web page is still in beta. 
• Global payment processing: Chargebee only deals with subscriptions and recurring billing, which means you’ll need additional software for payment processing, taxes, revenue management, and more.
• Reporting and analytics: Chargebee offers a built-in reporting feature with filters to help you find the report you need. 
• Pricing: You can use the Chargebee platform for free for the first $100k in revenue you earn. After that, they offer three plans ranging from $249/month to $549+/month. 
• Customer Reviews: Chargebee has 4.6 stars on G2 with over 560 reviews. You can read those reviews here.

Learn more: 8 Best Chargebee Alternatives and Competitors (And How They’re Different)

Chargify: Subscription Billing Solution for B2B SaaS

Chargify is in the process of merging with SaaSOptics to help you automate subscription management, revenue and expense recognition, and SaaS metric tracking all from one platform. 

Here’s how Chargify addresses each category: 

• Subscription management and recurring billing: Chargify focuses more heavily on recurring billing for B2B SaaS companies, however, they do offer several options for subscription management. They advertise the ability to support any ecommerce go-to-market strategy. 
• Checkout and global payment processing: Chargify integrates with Stripe Billing for checkout and payment processing. 
• Reporting and analytics: When Chargify and SaaSOptics complete the merger, you will have access to a full suite of reporting and analytics tools. 
• Pricing: Chargify’s pricing plans start at $599/month for companies earning $75k per month in billings. If you earn more revenue or want access to all features, you’ll have to contact their team.
• Customer Reviews: Chargify and SaaSOptics as Maxio has 4.2 stars on G2 with over 288 reviews. You can read those reviews here.

Zuora: Monetization Platform for Any Business

Zuora supports in-person and online subscription businesses. While they can support B2B and B2C transactions, customers suggest that they’re better suited for monthly rather than annual billing models. 

Here’s an overview of Zuora’s services: 

• Subscription management and recurring billing: Zuora offers 50+ pricing models for subscriptions, products, and services. They also offer custom invoicing features for B2B transactions. 
• Checkout: Zuora partners with Checkout.com to provide secure payment collection. 
• Global payment processing: Zuora offers 35+ prebuilt payment gateways. 
• Reporting and analytics: Zuora offers a library of pre-built financial reports and a report builder where you can customize reports.
• Pricing: You can reach out to their team for pricing details.
• Customer Reviews: Zuora has 3.9 stars on G2 with over 258 reviews. You can read those reviews here.

Stax Bill: Recurring Billing for Small Businesses

Stax Bill (formerly Fusebill) is one piece of the Stax Payment solution. Stax Bill offers simple automation for recurring billing and invoicing. They integrate with popular CRMs including Salesforce and HubSpot, so you can manage payments from either place. 

Here’s how Stax Bill measures up in each category: 

• Subscription management and recurring billing: Stax Bill offers many of the common recurring billing model options, however, they emphasize flexible catalog management and their self-serve customer portal. 
• Checkout: Stax Payments includes a pre-built shopping cart and options for creating your own.
• Global payment processing: Stax Bill offers payment gateway integrations with multiple global payment processors, however, you’ll be charged extra for these services. 
• Reporting and analytics: Stax Bill provides 40+ pre-built reports that automatically update in real-time. 
• Pricing: Stax Payment pricing starts at $99/month for small businesses. 
• Customer Reviews: Stax Bill has 4.2 stars on G2 with over 90 reviews. You can read those reviews here.

Zoho Subscriptions: Online Subscription Billing Software

Zoho Subscriptions is one part of the Zoho platform. If you’re already using the Zoho platform, this could be a good option. However, users who are new to the platform often find it difficult to navigate. 

Here’s how Zoho Subscription compares in each category: 

• Subscription management and recurring billing: Zoho Subscriptions offers more flexibility than many solutions when it comes to how you set up your free trials. For example, like FastSpring, you won’t have to collect payment details. In regards to subscription and recurring billing models, Zoho offers many of the same options as other tools.
• Checkout: Zoho Checkout is another part of the Zoho ecosystem. Depending on the plan you choose, these two services may be priced separately.
• Global payment processing: Payment processing is also offered through Zoho Checkout. 
• Reporting and analytics: Zoho Subscriptions comes with a built-in reporting tool that shows you key metrics such as total subscribers or total churn. You can also view financial reports such as a break-even sheet. 
• Pricing: Zoho Subscriptions is free for the first 20 subscriptions, then it starts at $49/month. However, you’ll need to keep in mind that any additional services you need, such as Zoho Checkout, are priced separately. 
• Customer Reviews: Zoho Subscriptions has 4.4 stars on G2 with over 42 reviews. You can read those reviews here.

Instead of managing a large software stack, let FastSpring handle the entire payment lifecycle for you. If you think FastSpring could be the right Recurly alternative for your business, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

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